3 Weeks Vacation

Hello everyone! You might be wondering why I wasn't active in the past few weeks.  We're on vacation. I have to admit this is unplanned though, so my plans for September-October activities are on-hold.  I didn't bring my laptop with me so even if I have something to share on the activities we did early September, I cannot post it because the pictures are in my hard-drive.

We still have a few more days left, and am preparing again for another 22hour flight back.  My son is born a traveller, he's been crossing continents/countries for the past 4 years and never gave me a headache. Everyone calls him a jet-setter boy!

In a few weeks time, we'll be back in our regular programming, but for now.... we're enjoying this!

Continent: North America

This week, we worked on our North America unit.  Here’s what we did:

Read books. Review our geography map and cards.

Studied the map of North America and identifying the countries by pinning flags.

 

Mavi reads the names of the countries on each flag.

I realize that it was hard to pin flags on Central America LOL

I enjoy seeing small hands in action.  I love to see concentration and dedication.

Our North America landmarks.  This is homemade. We also used our Safari Toob Around the World (not in the picture).  Here’s a link to download a copy of the landmarks.

Learn about the animals living in North America.  Here I made animal cards that goes with the Safari Toob North America Wildlife.  If you wish to have a copy of the card, you can download it from here.  I’m happy to share, but this is only for personal use.  The information written on the card were all resourced from the internet.

Our little moosie lost one of his horns :(

And we also studied the life of North American people in effect we were able to make a Navajo craft.  Read about it here. 

Enjoy!

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Pablo Picasso and the Blue Period

We’re studying the works of Pablo Picasso as of the moment.  Currently, we’re exploring the “blue period”.  It’s amazing to discover that our reliable library got tons of art books for kids!  I got a few ones for myself and I only selected a few suited for my boy.  Here’s what he read had so far:

 

He wanted to paint the “blue” ones, its his favorite color.  So I gathered all the coloring materials we have that is blue or has a blue hue. 

He wanted to paint the windows, and he wanted to add some grass. And this is what he came up with. 

Then he said he wanted to paint the skies. 

Skies, in purple and blue.

Inspired by the “blue period”, his rendition of our backyard using crayons and pastels.

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Navajo Cheerios Painting

We’re currently working on our North America unit.  To understand a little bit of American history, we made this “cheerios” painting.  This idea came from this book: 

It contains lots of comprehensive introduction to American history, a peek at what the people eat and drinks, how they are dressed, their beliefs and how society was organized.  Among the projects in the this book, my son picked the designing of a Navajo.

It is said that healers from the Navajo tribe create paintings using colored sand.  And it is believed that these creations had the power to cure illness.  

Because we don’t have colored sand, we pulverized cheerios.  

Now I made a design in an art paper.  I placed the cheerios in a muffin paper.  As a guide, I place number on the shapes that are going to have the same color.  Then spread glue into the shapes of color number 1.

I made my son cover the glue using the desired powderized cheerios.  We did this with the rest of the shapes/colors. He loves filling the glue with cheerios, he was very particular with the colors mixing.  I was telling him it’s okay because it’s unavoidable.

              

I just love seeing little hands in action! 

His favorite part, lifting the paper and shaking off the excess powders.

We let it dry for a few hours and here’s what we ended up with.  A Navajo tribe healing painting :)

Happy crafting!

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Internal Organs: Puzzle and Nomenclature Cards

This is my last post of my Human Body series.

After we go about the internal organs, I made my son do this puzzle which I bought when we were in Singapore.  It’s actually an eraser LOL and I got it for less than a dollar :) He loves puzzles!

              

 

And then we worked on the nomenclature cards which I got from Montessori Print Shop.

Hope you enjoy our Human Body unit study!  Hope to be more creative the next time we visit this unit ;)

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Internal Organs of the Human Body

This is the second part of our unit study of the Human Body.  After we have formed our Skeletal System, I introduced to Mavi the internal organs of the human body.  We started with the brain of course...

BRAIN.  I printed a black and white image of the brain and colored it to save ink.  I talked about how important the our brain is, how it controls every senses we have and affects how we think or respond to certain event.  And I added that it is very delicate that’s why we should avoid banging our head so as not to damage the brain.

              

LUNGS.  Our lungs looked funny because they were too small LOL.  Important thing for him to remember her is that we use our lungs to breath. 

              

Then I showed him how lungs work using a plastic.  He can’t resist though and wanted to try it too.

HEART.  Heart pumps the blood in our body and that it produces a beating sound.  This part he loves the most... listening to my heartbeat! I just hope he still recognizes that sound... he’s listening to it for months while he’s in womb :)

LIVER, STOMACH, INTESTINES.  This part seems a little complicated to him.  I just described this system on a level of a 4yr old :)

BLADDER.  The organ that holds the urine (waste water) is the bladder.  He’s interested with it because he’s always curious how and why he urinates.

These are the basic organs that I think are essential for my son to learn as he keeps on asking about his body.  I think it’s not that much though... I just picked the ones I know his brain can digest easily.  We’ll definitely revisit this subject next year! 

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